@FatsharkStrawHat can we please have that conversation? 5 days and this thread has 1k views, 565 likes, and 182 comments by 53 different users. It’s clearly something everybody really cares about!
DS ruins a lot of fun by being so out of whack compared to everything else. Very powerful weapons are fine (see relic blade) as long as they come with tradeoffs, which the dueling sword does not. The balance changes detailed so far are very welcome but (at least IMO) it would make sense to address the “outliers” first at both ends of the spectrum.
Dueling sword is a huge balance outlier. There are others at the other end of the spectrum too for example tactical axe is incredibly weak. Tactical axe and other underperforming weapons (infantry lasguns, double shotgun, heavy swords, devils claw, vigilant autoguns) don’t ruin the fun in the same way as the dueling sword does but their lack of viability really dampens the variety of heretic purging fun we can have.